The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel
Feb 2016 · Knopf Canada
4.3star
3 reviewsreport
Ebook
272
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About this ebook
Yann Martel, author of the bestselling novel Life of Pi, returns to the storytelling power and luminous wisdom of his master novel.
The High Mountains of Portugal is a suspenseful, mesmerizing story of a great quest for meaning, told in three intersecting narratives touching the lives of three different people and their families, and taking us on an extraordinary journey through the last century. We begin in the early 1900s, when Tomás discovers an ancient journal and sets out from Lisbon in one of the very first motor cars in Portugal in search of the strange treasure the journal describes. Thirty-five years later, a pathologist devoted to the novels of Agatha Christie, whose wife has possibly been murdered, finds himself drawn into the consequences of Tomás's quest. Fifty years later, Senator Peter Tovy of Ottawa, grieving the death of his own beloved wife, rescues a chimpanzee from an Oklahoma research facility and takes it to live with him in his ancestral village in northern Portugal, where the strands of all three stories miraculously mesh together.
Beautiful, witty and engaging, this novel offers us the same tender exploration of the impact and significance of great love and great loss, belief and unbelief, that has marked all of Yann Martel's brilliant, unexpected novels.
The High Mountains of Portugal is a suspenseful, mesmerizing story of a great quest for meaning, told in three intersecting narratives touching the lives of three different people and their families, and taking us on an extraordinary journey through the last century. We begin in the early 1900s, when Tomás discovers an ancient journal and sets out from Lisbon in one of the very first motor cars in Portugal in search of the strange treasure the journal describes. Thirty-five years later, a pathologist devoted to the novels of Agatha Christie, whose wife has possibly been murdered, finds himself drawn into the consequences of Tomás's quest. Fifty years later, Senator Peter Tovy of Ottawa, grieving the death of his own beloved wife, rescues a chimpanzee from an Oklahoma research facility and takes it to live with him in his ancestral village in northern Portugal, where the strands of all three stories miraculously mesh together.
Beautiful, witty and engaging, this novel offers us the same tender exploration of the impact and significance of great love and great loss, belief and unbelief, that has marked all of Yann Martel's brilliant, unexpected novels.
Ratings and reviews
4.3
3 reviews
Margarita Kozhevnikova
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August 6, 2024
This is one of the most impactful books for me. The way the author structures the book, left me with a sense of being touched and seen by reality of suffering, death, sex, love, compassion and companionship. Nothing is left out.
About the author
YANN MARTEL is the author of Life of Pi, the #1 international bestseller published in more than 50 territories that has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide, won the 2002 Booker (among many other prizes), spent more than a year on Canadian and international bestseller lists, and was adapted to the screen in an Oscar-winning film by Ang Lee. He is also the award-winning author of The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (which won the Journey Prize), Self, Beatrice & Virgil, and a book of recommended reading: 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. Born in Spain in 1963, he studied philosophy at Trent University, worked at odd jobs and travelled widely before turning to writing. In 2021 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada. He lives in Saskatoon with the writer Alice Kuipers and their four children.
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